Major AEW Star Ready To Return After 514 Days: “No More Barriers”
A former AEW World Trios Champion is pumped up for his in-ring return after 17 months. The star in question is Buddy Matthews.
After his WWE run from 2013 to 2021, Buddy Matthews joined All Elite Wrestling in 2022. He gained prominence with his ‘House of Black’ faction during his All Elite run alongside Malakai Black and Brody King, and the trio also became AEW World Trios Champions once.
Buddy Matthews last competed at AEW Grand Slam Australia in February 2025, where he was defeated by Kazuchicka Okada in a Continental Championship match. Buddy also sustained an injury in that match and has been out of action for more than 500 days now.
Meanwhile, Buddy Matthews took to his Instagram handle to imply that he is cleared for in-ring action, and teased his return with the following statement:
The Devil signed the clearance. Hell stamped its approval. No more barriers. Only timing.”
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AEW star on whether WWE rumors affect his performance
The AEW star Buddy Matthews has been with Tony Khan’s promotion since 2022, but there have been a lot of rumors and speculations about his potential return to the WWE.
During an interview back in 2024, Buddy Matthews was asked whether the speculations about his possible WWE return affect his performance. Buddy said it doesn’t impact anything while calling out the negativity on social media:
It doesn’t impact anything. It’s.. anything that is on Insta, Twitter, or what’s it called? X, X? I don’t even use it. It’s just called negative to me. Like there is nothing positive on that. It’s just where people can honestly feel better about It doesn’t do anything positive in the world. This is my perception of it.”
So, the ideas of listening to people talk contracts and you can speculate, but when you’re putting it on a forum to try and generate either a negative, because you’re trying to generate a negative reaction regardless, because it’s not ever put in a positive way. You’re just trying to get people on your side. So, it doesn’t affect me because I don’t even look at it. The performance doesn’t affect that because i have a job that needs to be done.”
So, the speculation is fine, but it doesn’t affect me. I guess it’s a long thing. But, yeah, I need to get that thing out that what people say and how they determine it and what they want to put out, that doesn’t, like, it’s in one area. It’s look and move past. I feel like a lot of people on Twitter think that they have enough power and they’re trying to generate a reaction. But to be fair, no one’s giving a sh*t,” said Matthews.
It remains to be seen when Buddy Matthews will be back on AEW TV.
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